Darwin did in the werewolf
Who killed off werewolves? Darwin did it, says a science historian, by linking humans to ape-like ancestors.
In a July meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, historian Brian Regal of Kean University in Union, N.J., will demonstrate how werewolves, feared hiding behind every tree in travelers' tales for centuries, died out in folklore following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859.
"The spread of the idea of evolution helped kill off the werewolf because a canid-human hybrid makes no sense from an evolutionary point of view,” Regal says, in a society statement. Instead, tales of ape-men -- Yeti, Sasquatch and Bigfoot -- began to appear in popular tales, began to "evolve" in the popular imagination, he finds.
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In a July meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, historian Brian Regal of Kean University in Union, N.J., will demonstrate how werewolves, feared hiding behind every tree in travelers' tales for centuries, died out in folklore following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859.
"The spread of the idea of evolution helped kill off the werewolf because a canid-human hybrid makes no sense from an evolutionary point of view,” Regal says, in a society statement. Instead, tales of ape-men -- Yeti, Sasquatch and Bigfoot -- began to appear in popular tales, began to "evolve" in the popular imagination, he finds.